Bush The Destroyer - Great Book Excerpt From The Guardian

[hatrack]

"'Prosperity will mean little," declared George W Bush while on the stump as presidential candidate, "if we leave to future generations a world of polluted air, toxic lakes and rivers, and vanished forests." By the time Bush departed his job as governor of Texas in December 2000, Texas had - according to a report from within the ranks of his own party - become the number-one state in the nation in manufacturing-plant emissions of toxic chemicals, in the release of industrial airborne toxins, in violations of clean water discharge standards and the release of toxic waste into underground wells. Under Bush's governorship, Houston had even passed Los Angeles to become the city with the worst air quality in America. The Republicans for Environmental Protection (REP) study could find not a single initiative by Bush during his term as governor that sought to improve either the state's air or its water. What would he do as president?
On January 20 2001 - Bush's first day in office - he called in the chief of staff, Andrew Card, and told him to send directives to every executive department with authority over environmental issues, ordering them to put on hold more than a dozen regulations left over from the Clinton administration. The regulations covered everything from lowering arsenic levels in drinking water to reducing releases of raw sewage.

Big Republican donors expected a return on their investment following the 2000 presidential election, and Bush was more than willing to deliver. Bush convened his National Energy Policy Development Group nine days after taking office. This was the panel that came to be known as the vice president's Energy Task Force. For four months, Dick Cheney, energy secretary Abraham, other cabinet secretaries and their deputies formulated the nation's energy policy behind the closed doors of the vice president's office and the cabinet room. Eighteen of the Republicans' top 25 donors from the energy industry were invited in and asked to contribute to the plan.

Kenneth Lay of Enron, who had loaned Bush his company jet during his presidential campaign, met the group numerous times. Executives from such companies and organisations as Chevron, ExxonMobil, the Nuclear Energy Institute, Westinghouse, Edison Electric Institute and the American Petroleum Institute consulted with the committee between six and 19 times. Upwards of 400 executives from 150 corporations and trade associations met with the taskforce from February to May 2001. The Cheney group did not speak to a single environmentalist during the hearings. Abraham said he didn't have time to meet them, and Cheney's office denied their requests for inclusion. Cheney and his colleagues emerged with a National Energy Plan in May 2001, which included 100 proposals and led to a massive energy bill with tax breaks for US energy interests estimated by Congress's Joint Committee on Taxation at $23.5bn (£13bn) - a pretty good return on the $44m (£24.5bn) it had donated to the Republicans during the previous year's election."

EDIT

And so much more at:

http://books.guardian.co.uk/extracts/story/0,6761,1294793,00.html

[rkc3]

1. Is that a 53,400% Return on Investment? Not too bad (if my math's right).

[bemildred]

2. Kali-Bush the destroyer rides among us. nt